I debated with myself for a couple weeks, but eventually decided the bottom line was “convenience.”

You know me, I’m a dirty soloing noob Rhino lover.

The problem was, I couldn’t quite convince myself to stick in items that would upgrade the basic warframe, when there was a slightly better Prime version (releasing very soon from the Vault / then already released) that would also benefit from said items.

Focus lens, exilus adapters, forma, you name it, it seemed like a bit of a waste. Especially when one is a noob and not exactly swimming in item wealth.

The other problems were a lack of time and not much willingness to interact with other players.

I mean, I -could- have farmed missions for a 7-9% drop chance of the correct relic, and then farmed other missions to open said relic for a 2%, 11% or 25% chance depending on the part. And it takes four said parts to build Rhino Prime.

If I did the missions solo, it would a) take a lot of time, and b) I wasn’t sure I could solo the harder missions, especially since some would be Void missions where enemies do quadruple their normal damage or something like that.

If I grouped for the missions, it would be a) not very fun as someone else would obviously be carrying for most of it, and b) it seemed like a good way to turn something enjoyable into a chore, e. g. clicking through mission complete screens every 2-5min while someone else did all the work with their overpowered characters.

(Or c) be an utterly horrible grouping experience with no desired prize at the end, which would be even more of a waste of time.)

Seeing as I needed every scrap of time I had to play around in Path of Exile’s Incursion Flashback league, with Delve league fast coming in the background; mess around learning how to hunt various wyverns in Monster Hunter World; attend GW2 raids twice a week; reread some nostalgic novel series and get other desired progress going in Warframe, choosing to farm for fractions of a Prime warframe didn’t seem like the best use of a limited resource.

The more recommended alternative, even for players who are not willing to pay real dollars, is to use platinum to buy the Prime parts from others. (They just have to go through some additional steps of farming for other easier to obtain desired items first and then trade for the platinum.)

Seeing as I bought a ton of platinum for 25usd when I received a 75% off coupon oh so long ago and have been conserving it in my usual miserly fashion for weapon and frame slots, it would not really have killed me to spend a couple hundred plat to buy the parts from other people.

But said frame would come without a frame slot, and all the other goodies in the pack (which were also technically not worth the enormous asking price… maybe $30 if you were pushing it, not $60) AND I would have to sit there, refreshing the Warframe Market webpage, sending multiple tells to people, figure out the trade system and basically engage in a merchant simulation minigame.

That minigame being something I also avoided like the plague in Path of Exile, preferring to play solo self-found instead.

I’m sure it’s great if you like that kind of thing. I don’t.

I have limited time to play games and I want to be stuck in the action fast, from the moment I log on and pewpewing things.

As awesome Rhino.

Like, right now.

The more miserly part of me stepped in to say, wait a bit, and I did.

But for three weeks, the “I want a Rhino Prime. I can’t progress my Rhino without a Rhino Prime, though I can play my free Frost Prime from Twitch. I still really want a Rhino Prime” feeling kept echoing around in my body.

So ohh, what the heck, I can afford it, why not?

Yep, still awesome.

The Galatine greatsword is only rank 19 and not well-modded, so ignore the stats.

I could have just chosen to buy the $40 pack, but I figured it was a slightly better (if still a rip-off) deal to get all the other Prime stuff that I didn’t have, and the 1200 platinum, as opposed to half of the Prime stuff and only 400 platinum.

It did unfortunately repeat a Scindo Prime axe, which I scored from one of those ubiquitous Twitch Prime giveaways, but oh well, it’s an AXE, and a fairly fancy one at that. I suppose one day in the far future when I’m drowning in mods and endo, I can have the flexi option of having six (3 x 2 axes) loadout options for it.

(Or maybe one even further away day when Digital Extremes launches Melee version 10.0, they’ll let us dual wield two greataxes and I’ll be laughing all the way to the bank. Hey, I can dream, right?)

In the meantime, it’s just fun to play around with the extras.

Boltor Prime is surprisingly quite enjoyable, compared to the base Boltor that I wasn’t terribly impressed with. Nailing enemies to things with its projectile dart is neat.

Less so when you’re trying to shoot down a flying enemy in the Plains of Eidolon and the darts just don’t fly far enough before plonking down to the surface again… boy, do you wish for a hitscan weapon right about then.

Ankyros Prime is weird.

It’s like a giant pair of ugly boxing gloves.

The damage output is pretty sick, in a good way.

I don’t really like or feel the animations fit with my conception of my Rhino, the robotic frisbee boxing gloves look kind of stupid, but when you one shot regular critters with one punch and absolutely destroy tough-to-kill mobs by simply spamming the melee button for a combo that puts them on the ground to be demolished by a finisher..

… there’s a bit of a cognitive dissonance thing going on. Do I like them? Do I not?

Anyway, I got it to rank 30 before switching it out.

I figure I will eventually stumble into another frame which might be absolutely right for Ankyros Prime. (Maybe Atlas, I hear he’s One Punch Man or something like that.)

Alas, after thoroughly enjoying Rhino Prime all the way back up to rank 30 and slotting it with everything I can, besides a forma that would bring it back down again, I had to admit that I still don’t have the -good- mods that are necessary for most warframe builds.

I had to run a whole bunch of missions before finally finding Streamline by sheer chance in an Orokin treasure container, for example.

Flow, on the other hand, had utterly eluded me. (The mod, not Csikszentmihalyi’s version, though I guess you could say that too.)

I tried to do Tier 3 Dark Sector survivals for the 6.67% chance every 15 minutes; hunted without success in Orokin secret rooms and opened all the treasure containers; killed some Butchers in a Tier 1 defense while leveling low rank warframes on the teeny tiny off chance that the 0.03% drop chance would kick in; finally settling in for the long haul on a Tier 3 Dark Sector excavation – that is, Pluto, Hieracon – with also a 6.67% drop chance every 3 excavators successfully defended.

Naturally, Rhino Prime is not terribly awesome at defending objects – or at least I can’t play him well enough to do so. So I had to fall back on Frost Prime.

For days.

Granted, I have limited time, so I maybe could only do 3-5 runs a night, but that’s pretty much my limit for grind. 14 runs back to back is just not me.

So there was IMMENSE relief when on one of these interminably repetitive missions, it finally dropped.

It was a screenshot worthy occasion.

Ironically, I’m now grinding other missions, for other stuff, and not really minding it too much.

I think it was just the backed-into-a-corner feeling that I didn’t have a large enough variety toolset to deal with Tier 3 missions without using my very best weapons and warframe for the job.

And even that was a little tough nearer the end part of excavator 3, where I was heartily wishing I had enough syndicate standing to buy skill augment mods… like Chilling Globe, for example.

That’s something to be worked on too. Along with the other still missing mods of their ilk – Intensify, Continuity, etc… *sighs* Ah well, it’s “content.”

That said, if you’re doing Hieracon on Pluto, Vauban is far an away your best defense frame. Ability #3 with the Repelling Bastille augment = no mobs get anywhere close to your extractor or to you. Kill at your leisure.

Sure, that works if you have a fully kitted out Rhino with all the mods. At my current stage of the game, one is operating on 100 energy with no Flow mod. One stomp and he’s done.

No energy siphon mod as yet, no zenurik energizing dash, soloing and no exactly willing to craft dozens of squad energy restores just to fuel a simple grind mission…I’ll be interested to know of any other ways a skilled player could propose to a beginner to keep topped up on energy.

Join either the Perrin Sequence or the Arbiters of Hexis and get to rank 3 with them, then choose the “Squad Energy Restore (Large)x10” blueprint as your rank-up reward. Building 10 at a time makes it go quite quickly.

Alternately, if you’re in a clan, you can buy the “Squad Energy Restore (Medium)x10” blueprint from the energy lab in the clan dojo for 250K credits. I felt it a grind to craft any of these individually, but using the 10x bp’s never felt like a grind. I’d just start a new build, go do a mission, come back and it’s complete, so start another build, and so on.

As another alternate idea — I have several Flow mods, and I’d be happy to simply give one to you if we can ever arrange to be in-game at the same time.

If you’ve done The Limbo Theorem quest, you can use Limbo instead of Rhino — his #4 is an amazing defense bubble (especially in conjunction with his #2) also and he regens 2 energy per second whenever he’s “riftwalking” — either from dodging into the rift or standing inside his #4 bubble.

But with all of that said, using Frost is still probably your best bet. I love his Snowglobe on any defense-type mission.

Still and all, I always take Vauban when I do Hieracon. He really does make it easy-mode. Only the can-carriers have range, so anything else is held outside his Bastille ability and you can shoot them at your leisure. The moa mobs that shoot out ground cover crap eventually come and can be a pain too, but they’re generally not too bad.